Weather Action On The Livecam

[ricki]

Can you say squall line? Here's a nice one at the leading edge of a cold front. Winds had already dropped and shifted offshore before this one arrived. Often, the winds may persist and then go nuclear just before these bad boys pass over. Lots of kiters have been hurt by them and quite a few killed.

They are often easy to anticipate, I recall the one that killed a CT kiter was evident four days in advance. You can see them coming often enough. They also can pass quickly at times. If you know they are coming, that is the time to be off the water, kite down and secured for the short time it passes over. The wind can change on the backside, increase, change direction often by 90 degrees, or drop along with the temperature. Watermen need to know this stuff and act on it, in advance.









You can watch the cold front line move slowly over the USA, usually takes close to five days.

In this case the squall line killed the wind, here anyway. At other times it might boost it in seconds by a factor of three or four. Just sending the wind offshore can get you in trouble and has killed several kiters over the years.

You can anticipate frontal squall lines with proper weather planning and monitoring, so please do it. More ideas about weather planning in the top three stickies at: http://fksa.org/forumdisplay.php?f=29


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